Amulya Ganguli
It was difficult to understand the Chinese objective behind their latest provocation, especially when they finally realised that discretion was the better part of adventurism. As security analysts had noted, this time they pitched their tents in Ladakh and not wandered in and out of Indian territory as before. They might have claimed that they were camping on their side of the border, but why didn’t they do it earlier? And, why now?
Did their proactive conduct have anything to do with the change of guard in Beijing? Did the Chinese army want to send a message to the communist party’s new leadership that it favoured a tough line towards India? Hence, the incursion when the new Chinese premier Li Keqiang, was scheduled to visit India. However, if this was indeed an internal game, then the Chinese army can be said to have come out second best.
The motivations of the various power centres inside a closed, authoritarian country are never easy to understand. Cut off from the general public in the absence of a free press, and unaccustomed to any system of checks and balance, as in a democracy, the powerful but secluded official and political groups can sometimes work in isolation. Nothing showed this disjuncture more starkly than the Bo Xilai episode in which the career of a rising political star ended in disgrace.
The Chinese scene is further complicated by the fact that it has two restive regions – Tibet and Xinjiang – and, unlike India whose democracy enables it to deal with latent insurgencies with a measure of efficiency, China knows no way other than repression. It is the bottling up of the popular anger in these regions through brutal police action, which can persuade China to divert attention from such situations by fomenting tension on the border.
There is another aspect of the Chinese puzzle. It is possible that China hasn’t been able to come to terms with its own new military and economic might. It appears to believe that it has once again become the imperial Middle Kingdom of yore. But, there is one difference. The neighbouring countries are no longer the subservient vassal states of the medieval period. They may not be as “strong” as China, but they are no pushovers either.
The mismatch between the dreams of glory and the present reality makes China behave like a neighbourhood bully. Its conduct lacks the refinement of an ancient civilisation. Instead, it forever wants to take panga, to use an apt north Indian word which describes an eagerness to pick a fight with all and sundry.
That India should be a prime target is understandable for it, too, is an ancient civilization, which has acquired nuclear capabilities and not inconsiderable economic advancement. But, what must be most bothersome for China is that India’s democratic system automatically gives it a prestige to which China cannot aspire for all its formal material strength.
What is more, the remarkable success of Indian democracy must always be a reminder to the ordinary Chinese people of what they lack – the fifth modernisation, which was demanded on a wall poster put up on the so-called Democracy Wall in 1978 during a period of relative liberalisation when Deng Xiaoping was consolidating his power after Mao Zedong’s death and the overthrow of the Gang of Four.
No less irritating for China is probably the realisation that it can no longer “teach India a lesson” as easily as it claimed to do in 1962. India’s greater military strength and the close trade ties between the two countries rule out a repetition of a phase of their relationship when the two were in an earlier stage of development. Yet, the temptation for China – and probably the army more than the communist leadership – is always there to re-enact 1962 if only because China cannot allow the impression to spread that the line of actual control (LAC) has become the international border in real terms, as between India and Pakistan.
If the army chose the present time for incursion, it was probably because it was a now-or-never moment for it, for the Indian Government has never been weaker. Besides, the government may have become a victim of its own self-perpetuating image of India as not only a soft state, but a nation which takes pride in its softness. Hence, the remark of Salman Khurshid, the “excessively civil” external affairs minister, to quote the former army chief, Gen Shankar Roy Chowdhury, that India does not want to be a great power, but a great country.
However laudable the aim of upholding the lofty syncretism of Asoka, Akbar and Gandhi, and the high philosophy of the Upanishads, the outside world will not accord any respect to a country which is seen to be cowering before an unmannerly neighbour. It is this realisation which must have made New Delhi send out clear signals that the visits of both Salman Khurshid to China and of Li Keqiang to India were in danger. (IPA)
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